With this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY we come to the end of our summer publishing schedule and resume publication of the magazine every second week. The September 25 issue will contain the annual index. In October we commence our fifteenth year, grateful to God for his daily provision and for the increasing usefulness of the magazine.

In the current issue I have sought to highlight the invasion of the Church by alien viewpoints that have sapped its strength, diluted its message, and curtailed its missionary outreach. John Alexander, president of Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship, has an important word for college freshmen as they plunge into the exciting world of academia for the first time. Professor Batson demonstrates the contemporaneity of John Bunyan’s work and what profit can accrue to those who carefully read what he has written. His works have a timelessness about them. The second part of “The Hegelian Dialectic in Theology” appears. Its importance cannot be overestimated. Because much of contemporary thought is, consciously or unconsciously, indebted to its presuppositions, it needs to be understood. We have also excerpted a short section from a new book by Francis A. Schaeffer, whose penetrating analyses of this revolutionary age have had a profound effect on thinking people everywhere.

We covet for our readers strength, purpose, and tenacity as they begin their fall activities and as their churches return to full operating schedules.

It is a well known fact of human history that men look back to important events of the past, particularly when the past is believed to have some bearing on the present. We reflect not only about the political and national past, but also about the church, as in our remembrance of the Counter Reformation of the sixteenth century. Such recollection involves historic consciousness of the continuity of history, of the powers of the past that are being felt in the present. When we no longer experience the actuality of the past in the present, such recollections will gradually die.

It is therefore important to discern whether or not there is concern for the past. I mention this because I have noted that within the Roman Catholic Church hardly any attention is being given to the 100th anniversary of the First Vatican Council (1870) with its declaration of papal infallibility. Is this neglect simply accidental, or is there a reason for it?

In 1951, Roman Catholic theologians meditated deeply upon the meaning of the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), which formulated the confession that Christ is truly God and truly man. Excellent studies were written about this important council, even a trilogy about Chalcedon in the past, present, and future. In 1963, a congress was organized in Trent in commemoration of the Council of Trent of 1563. But in 1970, very little has been done to note the centennial of Vatican I.

In June, the Catholic Academy of Bavaria in Munich organized a weekend discussion that included several historic aspects of the First Vatican Council. I had the privilege of being there. Theologically this was a very important and instructive time. But ecclesiastically very little was said about 1870.

In the Netherlands—as far as I know—only one meeting was held to commemorate the First Vatican Council and that was sponsored by a small group of fighting fundamentalist partisans. These people advocate total subjection to the authority of the pope, and therefore 1870 is especially meaningful to them.

But one cannot say that this enthusiasm for papal infallibility is clearly evident in most Catholic circles of our day. It is true, a Second Vatican Council repeated several decisions of 1870, especially the infallibility of the pope, but it is apparent that Rome does not consider a special commemoration of the council opportune at this moment. Some Catholic scholars continue to study the meaning and consequences of 1870. For example, in 1968 H. J. Pottmeyer published a 600-page study about the First Vatican Council (Der Glaubevor den Anspruch der Wissenschaft), which digs deeply into its documents. But in 1970 nothing has been published, and I am sure that there is a good reason for this lack of interest: the crisis within the Roman Catholic Church concerning authority and especially papal infallibility.

In former days papal infallibility was a sign of assurance and safety. The pope knew the way because of what Vatican I called “Assistentia divina,” complete support of the Holy Spirit. Speaking ex cathedra through this infallibility in matters of faith and morals the pope could conquer all kinds of doubt and answer all questions of science and all questions of biblical studies. Many talked very romantically about the dogma of infallibility and often compared it to Israel’s being led by the pillar of cloud during the day and the pillar of fire during the night: “Thus the LORD went before them by day and by night to give them light that they might travel by day and by night” (Ex. 13:21). Many felt, as Israel had felt, a certain saving security and a guarantee for all ages.

But things have changed in 100 years. This romanticism of 1870 is being corroded by all kinds of uncertainties and insecurity. The church has discovered that things are less simple than this infallibility seemed to expect. When the horizon of human knowledge was enlarged many new problems appeared, particularly in areas where neither papal nor dogmatic authority always have answers. The decision of 1870 is now approached less romantically, much more humanly, and less broadly. Nobody has fought the declaration of 1870, but it has come to mean that the Lord of the church would not allow his church to perish but would keep her to the end of the ages. Even the infallible statement of the pope in 1950 (about the ascension of Mary into heaven) could not put a stop to doubts in an age when a simplistic dogma of infallibility and security is being questioned by so many in such diverse ways.

There are good reasons to wonder whether any infallible dogma will ever again be pronounced; the possibility of the pope speaking authoritatively and infallibly is being increasingly questioned, as many become impressed by his human limitations. Deficiencies in noninfallible pronouncements (remember the discussions about celibacy) also have thrown their shadows over the total authority of the pope in our day.

It is evident that Pope Paul VI is very disturbed about this crisis of authority and that he still finds the image of the pillars of cloud and fire deeply moving. But the value of this image is more and more being lost; it is as if the church itself realizes that an enthusiastic commemoration of 1870 is not only impossible at this moment but would simply produce further adverse reactions. The silence about 1870 is a remarkable sign from the ecclesiastical heaven. Romanticism has been replaced by an ecclesiastical realism that assigns to the pope a less important role functionally. The crisis of papal infallibility is a crisis of authority in the church. It becomes clearer every day that we cannot understand this authority as a formal authority (authority is authority!), that authority can only be worthy of our acceptance if seen in the light of the Gospel.

Remarkably, the present-day critics who object to overemphasis on papal authority often use the same arguments as Luther and Calvin. No one can prophesy how this situation will develop in the future. But there are good reasons to follow this development with great interest, and it is necessary that we continue to study the meaning for us of the pillars of cloud and of fire, the nature of Christ’s promise in Matthew 16, and the 1870 declaration of papal infallibility, for just at this place the most important decisions will have to be made.

G. C. BERKOUWER

Finest In Its Class

The New Bible Commentary: Revised, edited by D. Guthrie and J. A. Motyer (Eerdmans, 1970, 1310 pp., $12.95), is reviewed by Clark H. Pinnock, professor of systematic theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.

Since its appearance in 1953, demand has not abated for the New Bible Commentary. Yet in view of the progress made since that time in biblical studies, the publications committee of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship in Great Britain has undertaken a full-scale revision of the original, distinctly evangelical, one-volume commentary on the Bible. The aim of the work has remained the same—to provide the student of Scripture with an up-to-date treatment of the text that would combine a reverent regard for divine authority with careful scholarship of the highest order. Without fear of rebuke it can be said that this aim has been brilliantly achieved and that this volume must be the very finest in its class. For those who have profited from the first edition, the revisions have been very extensive—in numerous cases involving a completely new discussion of a biblical book (e.g., Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Isaiah, Matthew, Luke, John)—with the result that the volume has been vastly improved. Large quantities of the most illuminating comment, illustrated with the latest archaeological and linguist researches, have been added to produce a tool of enormous value to the Christian Church.

One way of indicating the special strength of this new edition is to observe how many highly qualified evangelical scholars have been added to the team in this new effort. Men like R. K. Harrison, G. L. Archer, M. G. Kline, D. Wiseman in the Old Testament section, and D. Guthrie, I. H. Marshall, R. P. Martin, S. J. Mikolaski in the New. One cannot avoid the encouraging impression that since 1953 there has arisen a body of committed scholars of evangelical persuasion who have both retained their biblical convictions and received training in biblical studies of the highest caliber. This volume attests to the existence of a body of men now in their prime who are capable of truly outstanding and lasting work in the ministry of the Word of God. For that we must be profoundly grateful to God.

Fresh strength has been injected into the introductory articles. While the handling of revelation and inspiration by Packer and Bromiley required little change, several improvements are visible as the section advances. Articles dealing with the history of Israel, the shape of Old Testament theology, and the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch have been added, together with an important new discussion of the Pauline corpus by Guthrie. There has been no shift whatsoever in commitment to the total trustworthiness of Scripture. The changes have entirely to do with increasing the precision of argument and exposition. If anything, the position taken, for example, on the authenticity of the Pentateuch and on the unity of authorship in the book of Isaiah has been sharpened and the conservative view stated more positively.

In the Old Testament section, three scholars especially, entirely fluent in ancient Near East studies, have improved the treatment of the Pentateuch greatly—Kline on Genesis, J. A. Thompson on Numbers, and R. K. Harrison on Deuteronomy. Because of their acquaintance with the cultural-linguistic setting, coupled with a profound theological understanding, they offer the reader a superb guide to this section of Scripture. While Ellison’s discussion of First and Second Chronicles is retained, an entirely new commentary on First and Second Samuel (D. F. Payne) and First and Second Kings (W. S. LaSor) has been provided. For each biblical book, excellent introductory material is presented, along with very pertinent comments and frequent appendices. As for the prophetic books, D. Kidner has written an entirely new entry for Isaiah, based firmly upon the conviction of its unity. Jeremiah has been revised and rewritten by A. Millard. Beasley Murray on Ezekiel and Young on Daniel have been kept unchanged. Half of the Minor Prophets enjoy a new entry altogether while the rest have undergone amplification. The entire Old Testament is treated in such a way as to instill deep confidence in its historical trustworthiness and theological profundity. Space does not allow even a listing of a fraction of the positions taken on key issues (e.g., Genesis 1 is topical, not chronological; Genesis 1–11 is historical; the extent of the Flood is not settled; the late date for the exodus is accepted). A student of Scripture, and certainly the preacher and teacher, cannot afford to be without this powerful aid to understanding.

In the New Testament section, it is suitably impressive to list the entirely new entries: Matthew (R. E. Nixon), Luke (I. H. Marshall), John (D. Guthrie), Galatians (Mikolaski), Ephesians (R. P. Martin), Colossians (Guthrie), and others as well. Here we find scholarly judgment unsurpassed in quality and balanced in perspective. It is simply impossible to do justice to this work! In its revised form, this commentary matches both in excellence and in form (type style, scholarly apparatus) the New Bible Dictionary. Together the two books compose the single most valuable resource at present available to the student of Scripture. They deserve only the highest praise. The commentary is sent out with the prayer that God will use it by his Spirit to help many gain a fresh understanding of his truth so that the whole of human life may be brought into subjection to the Word of God. We believe that this prayer will continue to be answered as God’s people avail themselves of this most useful tool.

Bunyan—A Hybrid

John Bunyan, by Richard L. Greaves (Eerdmans, 1969, 176 pp., $5.50), is reviewed by Fred H. Klooster, professor of systematic theology, Calvin Theological Seminary, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

John Bunyan was “a Bedfordshire tinker with the vision of Paul, the conviction of Luther, and the commitment to freedom of Milton.” What was the theological stance of this popular preacher and author who never graduated from a university? When one of his contemporaries (Fowler) stated that he saw the influence of Calvin, Martyr, Musculus, and Zanchy upon him, Bunyan retorted: “It matters nothing to me, I have neither made my Creed out of them, nor other, than the Holy Scriptures of God.” Bunyan’s response and the problem of identifying his theology remind us of Elector Frederick III of the Palatinate, who was charged with Calvinism when he published the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563.

In this interesting book Professor Greaves attempts to determine Bunyan’s theological position by surveying his views of the pilgrim’s God, call, response, covenant, and stately palace. Greaves disagrees with those critics and historians who regard Bunyan as simply a Calvinist, though he agrees that this was the dominant theological influence. He also disagrees with those (S. T. Coleridge, for example) who claim to see only Lutheranism in Bunyan; Bunyan’s detailed exposition of the covenants is sufficient evidence to the contrary. Greaves contends that on a Lutheran foundation Bunyan has built an essentially Calvinist superstructure. But Bunyan’s theology is more hybrid still:

No single theological label without careful qualification will fit Bunyan. He was bitterly opposed both to Arminianism and to Quakerism, and he was neither a moderate Calvinist nor a true Antinomian, although at certain points his doctrine was harmonious with Antinomian tenets. His foundation principles were basically Lutheran, but much of his theology was in full accord with the orthodox Calvinism of his period. His doctrine of the church and sacraments was neither Calvinist nor Lutheran but a heritage from the Independent-Baptist tradition, particularly the segment of that tradition of which he was a part [p. 159].

The attempt to evaluate Bunyan’s theological stance is welcome. In its original, expanded form, this study was presented as a doctoral dissertation at the University of London. But one is forced to ask whether Professor Greaves, who is now professor of humanities at Michigan State University, has provided adequate theological criteria for his assessment of Bunyan. A glance at the glossary of theological terms appended to the study indicates the theological weakness. In assessing what in Bunyan is Lutheran and what Calvinist, the author usually employs the sixteenth-century Lutherans and the seventeenth-century Calvinists as his standard. A more accurate evaluation would have resulted had he used Luther and Calvin as his standard for judgment. Furthermore, he has usually taken over such common misconceptions (caricatures) of Calvinism in his evaluation as “abstract concepts of sovereignty,” “abstract philosophical principles,” and “more logic bound orthodox Calvinism.” If he had used Calvin as his standard for Calvinism, he would have seen that Calvin also set predestination in a soteriological context (cf. p. 157). Greave’s treatment of the covenant and of antinomianism are also in need of further theological refinement.

Such weaknesses in the author’s theological perspective prevent many of his arguments from carrying conviction. Bunyan’s thought is obviously difficult to classify theologically. Apart from his views of the Church and the sacraments, Bunyan may have been close to the truth when he simply claimed to be biblical: on that score Luther and Calvin were themselves closer to one another than many theologians have made them out to be. While we must still await a definitive study on Bunyan’s theology, Greave’s work is a stimulating contribution to that end.

Union With Christ

All Things Made New, by Lewis B. Smedes (Eerdmans, 1970, 272 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by E. Earle Ellis, professor of biblical studies, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, New Jersey.

For the Reformers, justification through faith was the center of Pauline thought. Many scholars in the nineteenth century, however, came to regard union with Christ as the capstone of the Apostle’s doctrine. In most recent discussion, Paul’s eschatology has been the core theme by which are explained both the unio mystica and the justification resulting from it: union with Christ is nothing less than a participation in Christ’s death and resurrection and, thus, an anticipation in the present of the future glory. But in what sense can it be said that Christians were “with Christ” in his death and resurrection in A.D.33 (Rom. 6:11 ff.; Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:1–3)?

Subordinating the eschatological question, Professor Smedes returns to the theme of union with Christ and its manifold implications for Christian life and faith. To be “in Christ” is not a Christ-mysticism (Deissmann) nor an ontological mysticism (Mascall) but an incorporation into a new situation brought about by Christ’s death and resurrection. In elaborating this thesis, Smedes rightly maintains that affirmations of Christ’s resurrection are statements of faith only “when they verbalize the reality of my entrance into the new order of life that was created when [Christ] died and rose again.” He also makes illuminating contributions to the current discussion on the sacramental body of Christ and the relation of Eucharist to sacrifice. On two scores, however, one is left less satisfied. In rejecting a contemporaneity of the believer “with Christ” at Calvary, Smedes does not appear to do full justice to the Pauline texts. Furthermore, his continuing oscillation between exegesis and modern philosophical theology raises questions of methodology for those trained in a more rigorously historical approach.

Book Briefs

Bible Teachings, by Doris Cutter Swann (Broadman, 1970, 46 pp., paperback, $.95). A short, easy-to-read volume of basic Bible truths.

The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John, by George Johnston (Cambridge University, 1970, 192 pp., $12.50). Contends that John’s approach to the Spirit-Paraclete as interpreter of Jesus of Nazareth was a defense against heresy.

Does the Church Know How To Teach?, edited by Kendig Brubaker Cully (Macmillan, 1970, 387 pp., $7.95). Designed to promote “intrade-nominational and intraconfessional” dialogue in the area of religious education.

“Der Spiegel” on the New Testament, by Werner Harenberg (Macmillan, 1970, 246 pp., paperback, $1.95). A newly translated report of the debate between European conservatives and radicals in both universities and parishes.

The current attempts within the church to lower standards of morality can only be described as Satanic. Carried to their intended and logical conclusion, they will replace Christian standards based on the clear teachings of Scripture with those of the world. They will bring the sure disaster such laxness entails. They will render the church, which led the way in this tragedy, powerless in an area where everyone, particularly young people, needs standards to go by, as well as wisdom and restraints that the world cannot give. It infuriates some of us (and I am angry with what I believe is righteous indignation) that some church leaders condone, excuse, and even espouse immorality under the guise of what they call a “much needed new freedom.”

I am angry not only at what those churchmen are doing but also with the way they are doing it. First they deny that God has established moral absolutes. Then they ask individuals to prepare “daring” position papers which will be used for study and conversation. Finally, if these new concepts of morality and immorality cannot secure immediate approval from a church court, they ask that the papers be “sent down for study,” knowing that what is rejected today may by default become the position of the church tomorrow.

The psalmist warns of the three steps to destruction: walking in the counsel of the ungodly, standing in the way of sinners, and finally sitting in the seats of the scoffers. In the same way, the man in the pew is being asked to “study” an evil report so that in the end its findings will be accepted as the way for “Christian” living. As Alexander Pope once wrote,

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

As to be hated needs but to be seen;

Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

We first endure, then pity, the embrace.

I have before me church-sponsored magazines that once would have been suppressed and their editors and authors dismissed for publishing the filth they contain. Today they can get by with offering such fare unless some of us lay people, who share in the expense of producing this “Christian education” literature, will rise up with a holy anger like that of our Lord who demanded when cleansing the Temple, “Take these things away.”

One highly offensive magazine, published jointly by three denominations, has been defended on the basis that those engaged in Christian education need to know what the world is like so they can help young people combat its evils. But such literature appears on almost every newsstand in the land, and “underground newspapers” specialize in such filth; does the church have to sponsor and produce the same type of thing?

In this particular issue there was not a single article that stated the Christian position, nor was there one word of condemnation of the evil described. The conclusion is inevitable that those who produced this magazine, and those who defended it, enjoyed wallowing together in its filth.

In another official publication of two churches, jointly produced, there is an article which I am told was written at the request of a task force of a once great denomination for the purpose of “stimulating conversation.”

This article, instead of saying that some people hold to certain immoral ways of life, makes the following categorical suggestions to its readers:

(1) “Could not the church encourage lonely retired persons to live together or work out whatever other relationship would provide loving companionship and sexual enjoyment?” (This was so the people in question might not lose their social security benefits!)

Here in an official church paper, a woman—a paid employee in a high position in her church—suggests that the church should encourage fornication!

(2) “The church should ‘point the way with compassion and wisdom to a way of life’ that enables those who are single to express their sexuality and to establish deep sustaining relationships with men who may or may not be married.… Such relationships between single women and married men might or might not involve coitus. The church should also show its openness to the new forms of association.”

Now this same church employee is recommending that the church point the way to an adulterous life and place its benediction upon it.

(3) The writer goes on to advocate the Scandinavian commune system and adds, “Fidelity to the group or to a particular partner does not hinge on coitus or abstaining from coitus.”

First fornication, then adultery, and finally infidelity—all to be countenanced and encouraged by the church!

And the article ends with these words: “To put aside fear and hypocrisy, to live as new creatures in Christ, would that the church might set forth and act out what it means to live by grace and New Testament radicalness. How daring can we be?”

Apparently the author of this article either does not believe the words of our Lord and the Apostle Paul (if she has read them) about the God-ordained responsibilities of sex, or she has completely rejected the New Testament concept in favor of a pagan one.

I write in anger and I write a warning: If those responsible for religious magazines and their contents get by with these assaults on Christian morality, the day of church-approved prostitution is not far away!

I write in anger because of the pressures already encouraging our young people to engage in free love. If the church adds to the siren voices of vulgarity, immorality, and “freedom” on every hand, and doesn’t judge them guilty, then God will surely judge the church. Perhaps he will turn to those smaller denominations still accepting the Word of God at face value and still preaching that sooner or later immorality entails God’s judgment. They know that the Apostle Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit when he said, “Be sure of this, that no immoral or impure man … has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.… for it is because of these things that the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.… Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them” (Eph. 5:5, 6b, 11, RSV).

Within the cup of much that passes for “Christian” education today there is poison. First came the denial of God’s Word; now we come to the dregs of immorality. Look into what is being taught in your church. It may surprise and shock you. And it may lead you to join in an effective protest.

It should!

L. NELSON BELL

“Kurvenreich” was a road sign that greeted us often in the Bavarian Alps. “Abundant in curves” is, in fact, not only a warning appropriate to some driving conditions; it is an especially apt descriptive of German theology. Americans compensate for neglected emphases in religion by establishing new cults; Germans, on the other hand, produce new systems of theology.

A decade after its first publication in German, Wolfhart Pannenberg’s Revelation as History has now appeared in both a hardback (1968) and a paperback (1969) translation under a Macmillan label. As contributor to and editor of the volume, Pannenberg with his theological colleagues explores some long-neglected routes on the excursionary winding road of neo-Protestant theology.

The evangelical value of Pannenberg’s view lies in his recognition, long overdue in neo-Protestant dogmatics, of the revelatory significance of universal history, as inclusive also of special redemptive events, and supremely of the resurrection of the crucified Jesus as a striking anticipation of God’s future eschatological revelation. Over against dialectical-existential theology, which misconceives revelation as a present encounter in the internal “historicity” of the self, Pannenberg preserves the external, historically factual mediation of divine revelation centering in Jesus’ resurrection as the event decisive for the future of both church history and world history. With Moltmann, Pannenberg therefore happily extricates contemporary theology a bit from some of the strangleholds of Kantian criticism, which disallowed any and all external divine revelation in nature and history.

The doctrine of revelation, Pannenberg concedes in Revelation as History, “must somehow be confirmed on the basis of the biblical witnesses if it is to be theologically justifiable.” Somewhere or other almost every neo-Protestant theologian sends up such a flag salute to the Bible, only to make a revolutionary departure from these self-same Scriptures. Pannenberg is no exception.

Pannenberg gives a notably non-biblical turn to his theology of revelation in his failure to identify revelation adequately as a rational category, and in his one-sided connection of divine self-disclosure solely with God’s future eschatological manifestation. Nowhere does Pannenberg give a definitive statement of the noetic or epistemic content of divine revelation. As with Moltmann, so with Pannenberg, the emphasis that the consummation or completion of revelation is future is made to relativize all pre-eschatological disclosure, save only for the anticipative historical event of Jesus’ resurrection. But, like Bultmann’s dass, this notable exception may require more contextual anchorage than Pannenberg allows if we are to avoid its loss as a myth.

In his book on Christology, Jesus—God and Man, Pannenberg tells us that the prophetic and apostolic statements about the nature of God are to be regarded not as universally valid knowledge of God-in-himself but as doxological affirmations in the language of worship. But valid knowledge of God, I should think, is indispensable in worship. When the Apostle Paul emphasized in Romans 1 that God reveals himself objectively to the minds of men, he added that God gave the Gentiles up to self-deceptions because they glorified him not as God; in brief, authentic knowledge is the alternative to vain imaginations (Rom. 1:20 f.). It is simply not Gnostic to view divine revelation as conveying ontological information about God, nor is it Hellenistic to see the revelation of the glory of God in incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth.

Pannenberg’s exposition of the nature of revelation seems influenced at times by Hegel, by Ritschl, and by Troeltsch. Ritschl’s special emphasis had been that while God is revealed only in his acts, it is not God-in-himself that we know; the work of Jesus (in Pannenberg, his crucifixion and resurrection), and not the person of Jesus as incarnate Logos, was for Ritschl the locus of revelation. Ritschl’s brighter students never could discover what the “thing” revealed in phenomena is, if it is not the “thing-in-itself”; accordingly, the historical influence of Jesus embellished by value-judgments became for them the heart of Christianity.

Pannenberg refuses to identify revelation one-sidedly with Jesus of Nazareth, as did Ritschl, but stresses that God is revealed in universal history; contrary to Hegelian idealism, however, which sees history as the logical unfolding of the Idea, Pannenberg holds that the apocalyptic reading of history grasps God’s universal plan anticipatively disclosed in the fate of Jesus. But nowhere do Pannenberg and his theological cohorts so spell out this plan that it becomes significant for the subsequent history of the nations; in fact, the whole approach to historical revelation seems in some passages, quite in deference to Troeltsch, to be given over to what is now often called modern historical consciousness. The historical character of revelation comes then to mean the dispensability of the supernatural as a category of interpretation, and God himself is assigned a history. Avoid deism we must, to be sure; but if God is other than man and nature, then the category of the supernatural remains indispensable.

Finally, a clear weakness of Pannenberg’s view is his assumption that historical events are self-explanatory, and that the category of revelation is to be detached from the Divine Word and associated wholly with external historical acts; prophets or apostles, accordingly, are not to be viewed in terms of “a mediator between what happens and the one who experiences it” (Revelation as History). This view is so contrary to the prophetic-apostolic understanding of revelation that it virtually nullifies much of what Pannenberg gains by his recognition of the externality of historical revelation. For the Divine Word not only strikingly precedes and prepares for some redemptive events (e.g., the Exodus) but is also sometimes given independently of them to God’s spokesmen who are chosen bearers of his promise or warning.

Pannenberg does less than justice to revelation as a unity of event and interpretation, and to the fact that both the past event and its interpretation are now mediated to us in Scripture alone. The meaning of the saving events is not self-evident but is illumined from above, and their normative objective interpretation is to be found only in the inspired Word.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Prague Peacemakers Fight Back

In the Asian hotel where I am currently sheltering from the burning of the noontide heat, I have been perusing a month-old English newspaper. Its correspondence columns provided a curious commentary on the Northern Ireland situation. “It will not be lost upon your readers,” said the writer of one letter, making doubly sure, “that that excellent body of adult-minded people, the atheists, are in no way connected with this latest example of Christian savagery and blood-letting.” This view of the Church Militant will greatly encourage those in that troubled province who want to get the violence off the streets and back into the Church, where it belongs.

But more than the above-mentioned E.B. of A.M.P. are concerned about man’s warlike tendencies. The recent communiques of the Prague-based Christian Peace Conference have been in their own way compelling reading. Their English usage, always dizzily unpredictable, has further suffered during the last two years as domestic squabbles have brought that body close to total disintegration.

Perhaps in an attempt to take the spotlight off internal difficulties, the latest press release I have seen harks back to the safer subject of analyzing the causes of World War II. Having doctored the fractured English, I take the key sentence to be saying: “Except for racism, which itself was dangerous enough to people, it was also the limitless anti-communism that created an atmosphere wherein all the most terrible crimes on humanity were possible.” (A Russian member at the WCC central committee’s last meeting, be it noted, confirmed that there was no racism in the USSR, a statement that agreeable group heard without demur.)

It is somehow reassuring to see the CPC back on familiar ground. Plugging the “limitless anti-communism” line leaves no room for that dangerous self-examination which of late has given such pain to the jovial metropolitan of Leningrad, who does not enliven WCC occasions to be treated scurvily in what is now virtually his own backyard.

That the CPC was rallying further could be seen in the indignant rebuke that, the press release recounts, was administered to the mayor of West Berlin. With unaccustomed brevity and clarity it said, “Stop repressing the protest of youth!” And if the mayor dared quibble about what was meant by repression of youth, no one was better qualified to tell him than those CPC executive members whose governments encourage dissidents abroad while suppressing them at home.

EUTYCHUS IV

Happy Reflections

I have received CHRISTIANITY TODAY since my college days in 1957. My responses to the magazine have ranged the gamut from utter disgust to rapturous delight. No article, however, has given me more hopefulness and happiness about evangelicalism than Frank Gaebelein’s “Reflections in Retrospect” (July 31). Evangelicals may yet come out of the dark forest of cultural, political, and social provincialism!

DAN R. ERWIN

Bethany Baptist Church

Boulder, Colo.

As one who has also passed the three-score-and-ten age limit, I very much appreciated the article by Dr. Gaebelein. I was especially interested in the significance he ascribes to the providence of God. This has also been a great and overshadowing factor in my experience.

(The Rev.) H. M. VEENSCHOTEN

Byron Center, Mich.

I enjoyed “The Idea of a Christian College” and “Reflections in Retrospect” very much. But, as I read the two pieces consecutively (doesn’t everyone read C.T. consecutively?), I found myself wishing that Arthur Holmes might have shared the blessing of that “unique course in creative writing” which has made Dr. Gaebelein’s literary efforts masterpieces of communication.

Are the silly syntax and specialized synonyms of scholarly articles perspectival manifestations of the world-viewishness that is “a self-conscious and self-critical commitment, an honesty that need not be ashamed?”

What Dr. Holmes has to say is much too good to be said in language I have to explain to my wife. Can’t we leave the word games to Spiro Agnew and Reader’s Digest?

C. WILLIAM SHAFFER

Highland Park

Evangelical Free Church

Columbus, Neb.

The Way To The Stars

I was much impressed by the two articles on apologetics by Millard J. Erickson (July 17 and 31). They seemed to me some of the most substantial and worthwhile material I have seen in this magazine for some time. I thoroughly agree with the author that the time has come to try to find our way—with God’s help—out of the seemingly meaningless, purely existential “slough of despair” in which we often find ourselves at present and look toward the guiding stars of God’s eternal moral and spiritual universe, particularly as expressed in history’s most unique and perfect character, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

DAVID E. ERIKSON

Fresno, Calif.

Vital Distinctions

Carl Henry’s comment in Footnotes (July 31) on Walter Hollenweger contains serious discrepancies which must be corrected. The distinction made by Dr. Hollenweger was not between those “interested mainly in evangelism and those interested primarily in the social implications of Christianity.” It was, rather, a distinction “between those who were primarily interested in the correct definition of salvation and those who were primarily interested in the world-and life-transforming effects of salvation.” Vital Christianity has always been interested in that difference.

EUGENE L. SMITH

Executive Secretary

World Council of Churches

New York, N.Y.

My comment on Dr. Hollenweger’s remarks grew out of a Philadelphia newspaper report of the Buck Hill Falls meeting by a competent religion reporter. I was so shocked to read as coming from Dr. Hollenweger a view so similar to that voiced by an ecumenical aide who sought to undercut the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin that at the time I contacted the reporter, who checked his notes and was convinced of the accuracy of the report based on the prepared address and related comments by Dr. Hollenweger. I consider the remarks in this context a slur on American evangelicals who do not hop, skip, and jump to the ecumenical redefinition of ecumenism.

CARL F. H. HENRY

Professor of Theology

Eastern Baptist Seminary

Philadelphia, Pa.

Improving The Law

It was with some degree of surprise that I learned that the Lutheran Church in America has improved on God’s law regarding sex and marriage (“Marriage Covenant: Promises, Promises,” July 31).

It was with much assurance that I read the editorial and was relieved to know that it takes non-Lutheran theology and ethics to set Lutheran teaching in a biblical perspective again. Your emphasis on the publicly affirmed and contractually protected marriage commitment was greatly appreciated. What a small day for Lutheranism as a whole! What a great day for Christendom at large!

MYRON C. MALTZ

Redeemer Lutheran Church

Arkansas City, Kan.

A few weeks ago it was the Presbyterians, and now the Lutherans are getting into the act. When are some churchmen going to stop wasting their time dickering in committees on basic sexual mores when God has clearly spelled out the norm in the pages of Scripture?…

Maybe it is about time that some denominations quit forming resolutions, and started having marathon Bible reading sessions to discover what God has already declared in the areas they are attempting to rework.

CHUCK TOMPKINS

Dallas, Tex.

How To Answer Subversion

Your editorial “Subversion in the Church” (July 31) is indeed interesting but falls very far short of the point and misses the biblical answer.…

You say, “The tragedy is that the false teachers live off money that has been given to propagate what these teachers do not believe.” No, the tragedy is that these false teachers are so completely in control of denominational programs and are so well entrenched in the political machinery that they cannot be removed or replaced, and so they continue to spread their apostasy.

You suggest that orthodox believers should stay in the apostate-run denominations because “the churches [are] their churches, begun and nourished in orthodoxy.” Then you say, “However God’s people answer these questions.…” This is where you really miss the boat. It is not how God’s people answer these questions that matters; it is how God’s Word answers these questions that counts. God’s people should be encouraged to be obedient to God’s Word: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Cor. 6:17).

PHILLIP A. BASHAW

First Southern Methodist Church

Dallas, Tex.

The editorial touches on urgent and sensitive issues of concern to all of us who care about the vitality of orthodox Christianity. As I trust you are aware, however, the use of the term “subversion” lends itself to dangerous misunderstandings. History demonstrates that many of those appointed by the Holy Spirit, among them Jesus himself, have been condemned as subversives by the supposedly orthodox.…

Your warning against the church’s subversion both by those who reject responsibility for tradition and by those who subscribe to an introverted orthodoxy of formal assent alone is appropriate. More emphasis on the latter subversion, however, would present a better balanced picture of the sources of the Church’s decay. It might also hasten the day when committed members of the Body of Christ will speak the truth in love and in respect for the diversity of the Spirit’s gifts to the whole Church.

RICHARD J. NEUHAUS

Church of Saint John the Evangelist

Brooklyn, N.Y.

Fair Disadvantage?

I was very interested in your editorial comments on the fairness doctrine (July 31). While I agree with your concern about silencing people by government edict, I am also concerned about how you would propose to curb malicious and slanderous views on the air.

People who are unable to discriminate, or who do not have enough information, or who assume that when a man claims to speak for God he will naturally tell the truth, may be at a disadvantage. They may even be taken advantage of. It seems to me there is plenty of scriptural evidence for concern of those who are misused, manipulated, or misled. If this kind of activity is not to be stopped what do you propose?

HOWELL O. WILKINS

Wilmington District

Superintendent The United Methodist Church

Wilmington, Del.

Lutheran Watch

I would like to compliment Russell Chandler on his basic understanding of the differences in Lutheranism and his objective reporting (“Drawing Together or Pulling Apart,” July 17).…

I have felt for years that Lutheranism would eventually be divided into two main camps, conservative and liberal, and that this would take place after fellowship had been declared between LCA and Missouri or after mergers had taken place.

Now, however, it appears that LCA is in such a rush to get rid of all vestiges of orthodox Lutheranism that she is not going to wait around for Missouri “to see things her way” and may not even wait for ALC.

The disposition of the ordination of women by ALC this fall will go a long way in determining the future picture of the structure of Lutheranism in America. The passage of such a measure could be the first step between a merger of LCA and ALC and could very well result in the abrogation of fellowship between ALC and Missouri.

Needless to say, the next couple of years are going to be very interesting as well as decisive for Lutheranism. I am glad that C.T. will be around to report on them.

AL BOYSEN

Faith Lutheran Church

Tullahoma, Tenn.

Never before has homosexuality been so visible in this country, especially in entertainment and news reporting, and never before have homosexual groups been so militant. Because of increasing religious study of homosexuality and involvement of churches with homosexual causes, the news department ofCHRISTIANITY TODAYasked correspondent Robert Cleath to investigate. Here is his report:

People call the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles the “gay” church. This doesn’t particularly please the 440-member congregation drawn overwhelmingly from the homosexual community. “We are a Christian church first, and homosexual second,” said its 56-year-old assistant minister, who prefers not to be identified lest his regular job in the “straight” world be jeopardized.

The congregation that packs Hollywood’s Encore Theater each Sunday was founded nearly two years ago by the Reverend Troy Perry, 29, former Baptist and Church of God of Prophecy pastor. It now has branches in San Francisco, San Diego, and Chicago, with others pending in Miami and Minneapolis-St. Paul. The congregations are ready to ratify a constitution for a new denomination, “The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.” And Metropolitan leaders plan to establish a two-year seminary for homosexual ministers.

Howard Wells, 25, pastor to a hundred homophiles¹Homophile literally means anyone sympathetic to homosexuals though the term is often used as a synonym for homosexual. who meet over a gay bar in San Francisco, said in an interview: “If regular churches would welcome homosexuals and their lovers to worship God with them, there would be no need for the Metropolitan Community Church. As long as a homosexual has no lover and pretends he’s straight, he can attend a liberal church but in a fundamentalist church they’ll kick him out.” In his ministry Wells emphasizes that “homosexuals have the same potential to develop a meaningful relationship with God as any others.”

Perry is also president of the Western Homophile Conference and a board member of the Council on Religion and the Homophile. The council, formed in 1964 after a police raid on a dance, includes many heterosexual clergy from mainline denominations.

The founding of the Metropolitan Community Church reflects both the growing willingness of homosexuals to assert themselves as a movement and a more relaxed attitude toward homosexuals by religious groups. Regional and national church bodies, especially the United Church of Christ, the Lutheran Church in America, and the Episcopal Church, have advocated more dialogue between homosexual and heterosexual groups.

The New York Times reported that there are perhaps as many as 200 churches across the country that are known to be congenial to homosexuals. A Roman Catholic parish in Minneapolis opened its facilities last January to FREE (Fight Repression of Erotic Expression), a homosexual group composed largely of students from the University of Minnesota.

Homosexual delegates to the fifth annual North American Conference of Homophile Organizations met in Kansas City last year. As might be expected, all the religious participants at the convention advocated the new morality: there was no mention that homosexuality might be sinful or wrong, although some questioned whether it was the best way of life.

The Metropolitan Community Church has a twofold concern: to provide a church for unchurched homosexuals, most of whom have fled the “authoritarianism” of Roman Catholic and fundamentalist churches and to reform laws and customs that discriminate against homosexuals. Perry frequently presents the gay viewpoint on television talk shows and recently led a march for homosexual rights down Hollywood Boulevard. The church provides counseling and a “hot line” for the disturbed, seeks to get male hustlers off the streets, and looks with disdain on those who violate homosexual laws in public.

The church views homosexuality as a legitimate part of God’s creation—not as sin or sickness—and believes that the homosexual life style should be respected by society. Its homosexual ministers are far from homogeneous in theology or even in their views of the basic cause of homosexuality. Perry, whose sermons are fundamentalistic in tone, considers homosexuality essentially genetic. His assistant minister, a former United Church of Christ and Evangelical Reformed minister liberal in theology, believes homosexuality comes from psychological conditioning. Both men were married and fathered two children before turning to the gay life.

Metropolitan Community Church leaders are little concerned with the Bible’s condemnation of homosexuality. “We have learned not to get hung up on the Bible,” said San Francisco’s Wells. He claimed that the Old Testament’s admonitions against homosexuality were due to Israel’s need to increase its population and homosexuality was detrimental to this objective. The Apostle Paul, writing about homosex-sexual practices in Romans, “was a man of his times reflecting the general attitude of the Jewish nation,” according to Wells. Said the assistant minister at the Los Angeles church: “Paul does not speak for Jesus Christ. There is nothing in the Gospels about homosexuality. We believe God is a loving Father who will not eliminate from the kingdom of God any practicing homosexual for departing from what is only an established social norm.”

Its pastors claim that the Metropolitan Church serves as a dating center for homosexuals in no greater way than a straight church does for heterosexuals. The denomination’s mother church in Los Angeles has a United Presbyterian-ordained youth director, and holds monthly dances for 13 to 20-year-old homosexuals. This year’s social high jinx for the whole church was a May Festival that crowned a king and queen. A lesbian in formal male attire was chosen king; the queen was a boy in drag who resembled comedienne Carol Burnett.

The church encourages homosexual “marriages” to deepen personal relationships and cut down on sexual promiscuity with its attendant psychological and venereal disease problems. Perry has performed approximately forty such “marriages”; only two have not survived so far (one joined homosexuals of different sexes for convenience). Prior to the wedding, the “couples” must give evidence of having known each other for six months and attend two counseling sessions. In the legally unrecognized ceremonies, the words “friend and spouse” are substituted for “husband and wife.”

A Sunday service at Metropolitan Community Church is similar to most Protestant services except that the sermon frequently focuses on the topics especially relevant to homosexuals. Although the congregation includes a sprinkling of limp-wrist stereotypes, leather-clad boys, colorfully frilled men, and Mack-trucklike women, the great majority are indistinguishable in appearance from a typical WASP congregation. Like those in straight churches, most who attend Metropolitan come with problems of all kinds in the hope that God, with a little help from his friends, will make his love known to them.

Christian Teachers: Making Crucial Contributions

Alumni of Christian colleges are superior in their achievements to graduates of secular institutions of comparable size because of the quality of their Christian commitment. So said the president of a leading evangelical college who previously was chancellor of one of the nation’s largest secular universities.

Dr. John W. Snyder, 45, head of Westmont College and formerly chancellor of the main Bloomington campus of Indiana University, said that Christian education must not be secular education with a Christian veneer, but rather must stress a Christian approach to problem solving marked by drive, determination, consistency, stability, and creativity.

Snyder made his remarks on his home campus in Santa Barbara, California, at the first national convention of the National Educators Fellowship. The meeting last month drew 200 evangelical teachers and administrators from public and private schools. Speakers, including scholar-evangelist J. Edwin Orr, Los Angeles City Attorney Roger Arneberg, and James Panoch of the Religious Instruction Association, discussed the crucial contribution that the Christian teacher can make in the current ferment of American education.

The fellowship, founded by retired Los Angeles high school principal Benjamin Weiss and psychologist Clyde Narramore, has 2,000 members and distributes materials on legal ways of including the biblical viewpoint in school curricula to 17,000 teachers annually. It will soon move to new headquarters in Pasadena, California.

Dr. Orr, an authority on the history of spiritual awakenings, asserted that school development has frequently been the fruit of evangelical awakenings. If a new spiritual awakening comes to America, it will probably emerge on the college campus, Orr said.

Panoch told the fellowship not to concentrate on prayer, petitions, and parties to change governmental policies based on Supreme Court findings on religion in the schools. Instead, he said, Christian educators should work on teaching units about the Bible that are clearly within the law. The courts, he stressed, have held that public schools may not sponsor the practice of religion but may sponsor the study of it.

Arneberg warned against “the great danger of our age … an easy tolerance.” He said Christian educators could be tolerant of many things, but not of falsehood or evil. “They will be tolerant even toward other moral standards but not toward those whose scandalous behavior is a disgrace to Christian morality.”

ROBERT L. CLEATH

Missionaries March On

The day of foreign missions is over—or so some spokesmen have been saying for several decades. Actually, the number of missionaries is up 15 per cent from a decade ago. Figures just released by the Missions Advanced Research and Communication Center show that more than 33,000 Protestant missionaries from North America are serving overseas (adding Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and other non-Protestants would greatly increase the total). This figure is down from two years ago, but whether the decrease indicates a new trend will not be known for a while.

The ninth edition of North American Protestant Ministries Overseas lists over 600 organizations. Of the missionaries, about 5,000 are serving under National Council of Churches member communions (down from 5,850 in 1962), and 11,800 are serving under member societies of the closely related Interdenominational and Evangelical Foreign Mission Associations (up from 8,000 in 1962). Another 3,000 missionaries, chiefly Adventists and Lutherans, are affiliated with the NCC though their denominations are not.

The largest agencies are the Southern Baptists, 2,564; Wycliffe Bible Translators, 1,762; Seventh-day Adventists, 1,426; United Methodists, 1,397; Sudan Interior Mission, 993; and The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), 962.

Revival At The Racetrack

If the jockeys and bettors had put odds on the chances of Maryland’s Rosecroft Raceway being invaded by a couple thousand Bible-packing Christians, they might have set them at one in a thousand—with a confident chuckle.

But for fifteen consecutive nights last month the unthinkable happened. Crowds of Christians and curious seekers streamed past the cashiers’ and sellers’ booths to hear the Gospel preached by evangelist Paul Rader. It was the first time anything but horse races had ever been held there—a precedent upsetting some Christians as well as some racing enthusiasts.

The assault was the beginning of a long campaign directed at the 3.5 million people living in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. Within the next two or more years, as many as fifteen such efforts are expected, forming the “Circle Cities Crusades.” Each is to be held on neutral ground—such as the raceway—to attract those who avoid churches.

The Rosecroft outreach drew one to two thousand a night (including blacks, a majority of young people, and 30 to 40 per cent non-Christians) and recorded about 200 new commitments to Christ.

Rader emphasizes the complete mobilization of local churches for evangelism, with over forty from twelve denominations in southern Prince Georges County working together on the Rosecroft crusade. It was the first time ministers of that area had met together.

Rader moved to Washington in 1968 to begin involving local churches in aggressive, united outreach to the capital. In contrast to two years ago, he now sees definite signs of spiritual awakening in the area.

The husky, broad-shouldered evangelist is not new to the business. From his days as a University of Minnesota football player until he came to Washington, Rader tackled the unsaved of the Minneapolis area. He took over his father’s Gospel Tabernacle there and ran it for about thirty years, traveling widely to preach. In a family of fiery preachers—such as his grandfather Daniel, the “fighting parson of the West”—Rader marks the eighth straight generation of ministers.

ANNE EGGEBROTEN

Lutheran Youth: Caring In The Wilderness

Naïvely they ventured into the wilderness, taking “Bread for the day” with them.

The wilderness was New York, where 15,000 mid-western high school students of the American Lutheran Church (ALC) gathered and dispersed daily in one of the most unconventional conventions ever held. The official business was “caring”—and most of the time was spent getting to understand people in the city through “walk/talk/listen tours” and visits to social agencies, child care centers, and drug rehabilitation homes. “We just go out and love people,” said Gerry Glaser, one of the young planners of the event.

The tangle of traffic, subways, skyscrapers, and slums was new and overwhelming to many, causing some culture shock. But the youths weren’t sent into the streets alone: after sharing Communion in large services in ten hotels, each group of ten was given a “Bread packet” with a Scripture for the day and modern parallels to it from literature and newspapers. These were used en route during appropriate moments, helping them to listen to God’s Word in each wilderness encounter.

This experiment in confronting the modern world with a Christian lifestyle was “like a decentralized Bible camp,” explained Jerry Pyle, chairman of the happening. “Being a servant of Jesus in this context gave us a whole different perspective on life.” Each person’s experiences were unique. Said Pyle: “This isn’t one convention, but 15,000 conventions.”

The “backstage” program in Madison Square Garden continued the theme “And We Say We Care” with attention to world problems of hunger, development, and ecology, and a focus on the cultures of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The emphasis was on the problems and lives of the native people as expressed in their own words, dance, and music. The theme frequently became a question, demanding self-analysis that cut deeply into the lives of the young people gathered to listen.

Multi-media reigned. Slides flashed on two large screens while actors and dancers cavorted about the stage, narrators spoke, and background music fought for the foreground. At one point a Yoga expert had six members of the board of the Luther League doing headstands and breathing exercises on stage.

Folk singer Pete Seeger unleashed the full energy of the 15,000 teenagers when he sang, “If you want to get clear water, jump and shout,” to the tune, “She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain.” Later, the Voices of Harlem set the audience wild with their hard-rock sound, completing the circle of communication for more than 4,000 teens who had been “caring” in Harlem.

The week was bracketed between worship services. Also, in daily Communion, in small groups, and in some speeches and songs, the “faith” side of the Gospel was heard. The emphasis, however, was on faith in action.

“Kids are questioning the insistence that the only way to witness is in words … with the idea that maybe it’s better to do a little listening before you start talking,” said the Reverend Wilfred Bockelman, an ALC information coordinator. “We are here to be exposed to the suffering world.”

ANNE EGGEBROTEN

Ark Search Strikes Snag

Scientists and equipment sent from America to Turkey in hopes of scaling Mount Ararat this summer and finding the remains of Noah’s Ark have been quietly returned to the United States. An official of the Arctic Institute of North America, which with the SEARCH Foundation of Washington, d. c., had applied to the Turkish government for permission to excavate, said efforts will be made to continue the archaeological effort next summer.

SEARCH spokesmen cautiously refused to comment until the team’s head, Ralph B. Lenton of the Arctic Institute, returned home early this month with “all the facts.” Several news accounts last month stated that Turkish authorities “categorically rejected” all requests by foreign groups to search for the biblical ship.

“The expeditions have become a political issue in Turkey,” reported newsman Sam Cohen from Istanbul. “In view of the critical public opinion at home and Russian sensitivity abroad, the Turkish government has preferred to put an end (at least for the time being) to them all. The government does not wish to attract criticism from the many who now claim that the purpose of the expeditions is something other than the discovery of Noah’s Ark and that Turkey is being ‘fooled’ by the CIA.”

Religion In Transit

Conclusions of an opinion poll by the Presbyterian (U.S.) Board of Education of the denomination’s laity, clergy, and professional staff: reunion with northern Presbyterians could succeed, PCUS merger with COCU will fail, pronouncements on social issues are favored, women are more liberal than men on these issues, few want a new confession, and hard-core opposition in the church is smaller than the board expected.

Lutheran church bodies in North America slipped to 9,233,216 members by the close of 1969, a loss of 16,058 for the year, the Lutheran Council in the USA reported.

The American Association of Theological Schools (AATS) favors making the Doctorate of Ministry (D. Min.) the basic professional degree for the ministry.… A new degree—the Master of Arts in Religion (M.A.R.)—will be offered at Asbury Seminary beginning this fall.

A more militant Southern Christian Leadership Conference will return to the nation’s capital next spring to continue the Poor People’s Campaign, vowed a fiery Ralph David Abernathy at the SCLC’s convention last month.

More than 1,700 students and staff members of Campus Crusade for Christ completed a five-week Bible course last month to equip them for work on the nation’s campuses. Included were 540 new staffers.

The Roman Catholic equivalent of the New English Bible will be published by twelve firms across the country beginning this month. The new translation—in modern English—is called the New American Bible. The project took twenty-five years.

U. S. postal inspectors more than doubled arrests of pornography dealers during the last fiscal year.… The Federal Communications Commission said public complaints against obscenity, profanity, and indecency on radio and TV programs during the last fiscal year were up more than 60 per cent from the previous year.

Gospel Light Publications has established a new division, International Center of Learning, to train people for Christian service.

Personalia

St. Herman of Alaska was officially elevated by nine bishops in Kodiak last month. The first American saint in Eastern Orthodox Christianity was canonized in four days of ceremonies around the coffin containing the remains of the missionary priest at a small wooden church overlooking the Gulf of Alaska.

Father Daniel J. Berrigan, the fugitive pacifist priest, began a three-year prison sentence four months late last month after the 49-year-old Jesuit—convicted last April of destroying draft records—was captured by FBI agents posing as bird watchers outside the Block Island, Rhode Island, home of attorney William Stringfellow and poet Anthony Towne.

New York attorney Charles C. Parlin, 72, was named president of the World Methodist Council, succeeding the late Bishop Odd Hagen of Sweden. Parlin is the first layman to head the federation of thirty-three Methodist groups in ninety countries.

Chaplain Roy M. Terry, a Methodist and a major general, became chief of Air Force chaplains August 1.

The Reverend Donald K. Drake has become president of Piedmont Bible College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.… Dr. Merlyn W. Northfelt was elected president of Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.

Martin H. Work, for twenty years a leading spokesman for conservative Roman Catholicism in his post as executive director of the National Council of Catholic Men, resigned to join the staff of conservative Archbishop James V. Casey of Denver.

Dr. Elmer Kraemer, managing editor of the Lutheran Witness Reporter, publication of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, resigned to head public relations for a St. Louis Lutheran Hospital.

The Carl McIntire Collection of biographical materials on the Michigan-born fundamentalist radio preacher and president of Shelton College in Cape May, New Jersey, is being established by the Historical Collections of the University of Michigan.

Dr. Joseph D. Duffey, a United Church of Christ clergyman and president of Americans for Democratic Action, won the Connecticut Democratic nomination for the U. S. Senate by a comfortable margin to face incumbent Senator Thomas Dodd and a Republican nominee this fall.

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference reelected Dr. Ralph David Abernathy as its president at the thirteenth annual convention in Atlanta last month. The SCLC also attacked the FBI and lashed out at a Time article implying that SCLC founder Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a “vigorous” extramarital sex life.

Cadet Cary Donham, 20, a West Point senior, has asked to be discharged as a conscientious objector—the first such request in the academy’s history.

Deaths

FREDERICK BROWN HARRIS, 87, former chaplain of the Senate for a record twenty-four years and retired pastor of historic Foundry United Methodist Church; in Washington, D.C., of a heart attack.

FRANK HIGGINBOTHAM,65, pioneer of International Christian Leadership in Maryland and founder of the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast there; in Washington, D. C., of a heart attack.

World Scene

Bishop Abel T. Muzorewa, the first African to head the United Methodist Church in Rhodesia, was banned August 18 from black tribal areas by the Ian Smith regime. The bishop was thus barred from about three-quarters of his church’s 35,000 members. Christian churches in Rhodesia are risking their existence to defy the new apartheid law enacted by Smith.

The Vatican and Yugoslavia announced last month that after an eighteen-year interruption, full diplomatic relations between the two had been resumed at the ambassadorial level. Cuba is the only other Communist country exchanging ambassadors with the Vatican.

Century Baptist Church in downtown Toronto, Canada, was sold for $90,000 and is now the meeting place for the Theosophical Society. The movement blends pantheism, Hindu mysticism, magic, and transmigration. Salvation is attaining release from the tiresome burden of reincarnations in this miserable world.

The Southern Asia (India) Central Conference of the United Methodist Church, formally known as the Methodist Church in Southern Asia, apparently will not go into the proposed Church of North India as had been expected. A special session of the Central Conference reportedly voted 106 to 48 against the plan of union. Six other denominations are involved in the merger plan, but the MCSA was to have provided almost half of the CNI’s anticipated 1.3 million members.

Members of the Amateur Radio Missionary Service, which has about 450 members handling communication needs for missionaries from a dozen fields, held its annual meeting in St. Paul, Minnesota. The majority of league members are evangelicals.

International Bible College in Moose Jaw is feeling the financial bite. The Church of God (Cleveland) school, operating in Saskatchewan for thirty years, will not open this fall unless needed money is forthcoming.

Up From Suffer-Age

Liberated women gathered all over the nation on August 26 to commemorate the winning of suffrage fifty years ago and to clamor for Senate passage of the equal rights amendment to the Constitution. In Lafayette Park in front of the White House, mini-skirted young girls heard gray-haired grandes dames of the movement describe being “dragged away in paddy wagons right in front of that house” while demonstrating for the right to vote.

Dr. Cynthia Wedel, president of the National Council of Churches, was among speakers who urged freedom and equality without false protectionism. Red, white, and blue balloons bobbed with the message “Women are on the way up!” as the rally ended with the singing of “This light that’s given me, I’m gonna let it shine.…”

Watts is a ten-block-square area in south central Los Angeles. But to most whites, it’s any place in the city where most of the Negroes live. Watts skyrocketed to fame during riots there in 1965.

South central Los Angeles is predominantly black—93 per cent—with a scattering of Mexican-Americans. Within this area there are 600,000 people and more than 500 churches—everything from the traditional denominations to a group called House of Prayers.

Whatever their architecture or style, to Edward V. Hill, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Watts and one of the nation’s foremost Negro clergymen, these churches have great significance. Last January Hill helped found the World Christian Training Center, a unique organization created to renovate the spiritual atmosphere of ghettos.

“The Negro is a church-oriented person,” Hill explains. “Only 20 per cent of the people here do not attend church. The problem, therefore, is very dissimilar to the white community’s dilemma. There, getting people into the churches in the first place is difficult. Here, the problem is … what they should be doing—and aren’t—once they get there.”

The CTC, as the training center is called, evolved to train Negroes to be more evangelistic, more capable of teaching Bible studies and leading others to Christ, and more aware of both the demands and the abundance of the Christian life.

The commission of the CTC is threefold: Set your church on fire, win your block to Christ, and win your family. Its strategy is to recruit nuclei of persons out of local churches and neighborhoods and train them in witnessing, biblical fundamentals, and evangelism. Since Hill believes most people don’t really know Jesus, participants are given an in-depth course on the Person of Christ and a biblical analysis of salvation.

Next is a more personal step: helping individuals return to their churches and influence the people there to become soul winners. Hill puts it this way: “We are trying to teach one little spark to ignite a fire!”

The final section provides a program for personal evangelism on the trainee’s own block and within his family.

The center is presently staffed by four full-time members and twelve teachers—many of whom donate their time and efforts to the ghetto. Not all staff members are black, and they represent various denominations. Many white churches and other groups help support the center and its work.

Some in the Los Angeles area feel, however, that Hill is spreading himself too thin and that the ghetto revival may not get off the ground. “The potential … is there,” comments one Christian leader and editor of Los Angeles’ only Christian newspaper. “What Hill does … remains to be seen. You can’t be involved in thirty projects at one time and expect all of them to soar.” Helping to take up the leadership slack is Joe Ryan, a white minister of World Vision on special assignment to the CTC as its executive director.

“The only way black people are going to be won to Christ or turned on for him is through other black people,” remarks Hal Lindsey, a founder of a Christian group, the Light and Power Company. His organization, in Westwood near the UCLA campus, aids the CTC. “That’s why the CTC is so important,” Lindsey adds. “It gives blacks the training they need to reach other blacks.”

Hill, a close friend of Billy Graham and a renowned speaker and preacher himself, believes the CTC can lessen racial tension. “In Watts,” he notes, “we have white store owners, white policemen, white prostitutes, white insurance collectors. But there are no white Christians for the blacks to identify with.” Hill sees the CTC as a means of uniting black and white Christians and bridging that gap.

The CTC network, less than a year old, already is influencing Watts. When a person accepts Christ, the Christian who initially prayed with him gives the new Christian’s name and address to CTC headquarters, where a mature, well-trained Christian on the same block is located. He then begins Bible study and prayer with the new Christian. Hill explains the hoped-for chain reaction: “Where there was only one Christian on a block, there are now two. Those two immediately set up their own block ministry. Soon there will be three, four, five, until the entire block has been reached for Christ.”

As the ghettos go, so goes the world, Hill believes. The CTC is making significant strides toward bringing the ghettos up from their spiritual slump, turning them on to the Gospel, and working for harmony and peace among blacks and whites.

“We want people to know that there are rational, peace-loving blacks working among themselves to better their own lives and the national situation. And we want people to know that those blacks are Christians—God’s people,” stresses Hill. “When I get to heaven, I’d like to take all the people of the Los Angeles ghetto area with me.”

RITA KLEIN

Negro Churchmen Set Evangelism Congress

Black Baptist churchmen have been invited to attend a Congress on Evangelism in Kansas City, Missouri, September 15–17. Dr. Edward V. Hill, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Los Angeles and congress director, announced the gathering last month. The congress will involve primarily churchmen from the National Baptist Convention of America, the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc., and the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.

Pastors of other black churches in a six-state area, and some white ministers, also have been invited. Sessions will be held in St. Stephen’s Baptist Church where Dr. John Williams is pastor.

Scheduled speakers include Dr. Billy Graham and Graham team members Howard Jones and Walter Smyth, Dr. Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ, M. L. Scott, and C. A. W. Clark. The congress theme is “Training Men to Lead Men to Christ.”

All three of these black Baptist denominations were holding national conventions earlier this month; the Progressive National Baptists met in Kansas City.

Black Ministry Institute Rises From Conwell Center

An “Institute for Black Ministry” will replace the faltering urban center at the Philadelphia campus of Gordon-Conwell Seminary this fall. Increasing financial problems and stiffening requirements by the American Association of Theological Schools forced Gordon-Conwell officials to consider the shutdown of the Philadelphia facility last spring (see May 22 issue, page 36; also June 20, 1969, issue, page 32).

The new institute is due to open late this month with about eighty students; it will be black-run but open to non-blacks. The new school’s announced purpose is to “train men and women for Christian service from the perspective of the black experience.” The institute was formed by the 300-member Council of Black Clergy, headed by the Reverend Vaughn Eason, pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal Zion church in the city.

The new institute, to be headed by the Reverend Ronald Peters, a 1970 graduate of Gordon-Conwell Seminary, is said to be the first black religious school to surface in the current emphasis on distinctive contributions of black theology to the Church.

Gordon-Conwell is contributing $70,000 to the first year’s expenses of the new institute, according to president Harold Ockenga, who has been instrumental in the shift. The Gordon-Conwell board will continue to own the Philadelphia property, but it will be rented for $1 a year to a subsidiary board, according to seminary sources. The latter board will probably be composed of eight blacks and four whites. Eason said some faculty members for the Philadelphia school will be recruited from local black clergy.

Lyons Goes Full Circle

Catholic conservatives, badly bruised by recent developments within the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, scored a major victory last month by gaining full control of American Catholicism’s most influential newspaper, the National Register (circulation 112,000). The new owner is the Twin Circle Publishing Company of Culver City, California, producer of Twin Circle (circulation 105,000).

Sale of the 57-year-old weekly Register, which through the years gained a reputation for a moderately liberal editorial stance and a national readership far beyond its original diocese, was announced by Archbishop James V. Casey of Denver (at a reported price of $500,000). The sale was said not to affect the Register’s Denver and twenty-four other diocesan editions printed by the firm, but these editions have traditionally used columns and other editorial content originated by the national edition.

Twin Circle has been edited since its founding in 1967 by Father Daniel J. Lyons, known for his acid pen. Bankrolled by industrialist Patrick J. Frawley, who recently resigned executive positions with Schick-Eversharp and Technicolor, Twin Circle has been publishing the books and articles of Catholic conservatives who resent the church’s theological and sociological liberalism.

Twin Circle Publishing Company immediately announced it was moving its headquarters to Denver, renamed the paper the National Catholic Register, and put Dale Francis, former Twin Circle publisher, in charge as the Register’s editor-publisher. No sooner had Jesuit Lyons been named editor-publisher of Twin Circle, however, than Archbishop Robert Dwyer of Portland, Oregon, board president for both papers, asked for—and got—Lyons’s resignation.

The fuss stemmed from Lyons’s coverage of, and polemic editorials about, the California grape dispute for Twin Circle.¹In particular, Dwyer cited the refusal of Lyons to print Los Angeles archbishop Timothy Manning’s position on unionization of farm workers. Lyons charged that a committee of bishops negotiating with grape growers and pickers was fostering “compulsory unionism” and intended to organize all the farm workers in America. At month’s end it was still unclear whether Lyons would continue to have editorial duties beyond writing his weekly column for Twin Circle.

Meanwhile, Francis declared of the Register: “This is going to be a Catholic paper, and we might as well make that clear.… It will faithfully record what is happening but it will never consider the pronouncement of some obscure theologian as equal to what is said by the successor of Peter.”

How do you express nonconformity to the world but be involved in world need?

This has been the question for Mennonites since the former followers of Ulrich Zwingli founded the first Anabaptist congregation in 1525. And it is the compelling issue of the day for the younger generation of Mennonites that is wrestling with acculturation, non-resistance, the doctrine of separation of church and state, the social gospel, and evangelism.

“The church hierarchy is attempting to hold the line culturally, but youth are attempting to define their own identity—what it means to be one’s brother in the twentieth century,” said an under-25 spokesman for the (Old) Mennonite Church, the largest of the Mennonite bodies in the United States and Canada.¹Among the score of Mennonite bodies in the United States and Canada, the four largest are the (Old) Mennonite Church, with 94,755 baptized members; the General Conference Mennonite, 55,034; the Mennonite Brethren, 31,780; and the Old Order Amish Mennonites, 23,025. Altogether, the Mennonite movement has about 250,000 adherents in the United States and Canada and another 250,000 in the rest of the world. The very traditional, German-speaking, non-missionary-sending Amish are to be clearly distinguished from the other bodies. They are the unreconciled descendants of a division dating back to the 1690s in Switzerland. “Our parents are concerned we might be involved in the world,” continued Stuart Showalter, public relations director of Eastern Mennonite College, one of the denomination’s two college-seminary combinations. “We are concerned we might not be involved at the right point. Our parents were concerned we would be contaminated; we seek contamination and we seek to eliminate it.”

Mennonites have been in hot water over the church-state issue ever since they disagreed with Zwingli (and Calvin and Luther), maintaining that relationships between the government and established religion should be minimal. They have also insisted that only adult believers be baptized, repudiated the sacramental view of Communion, and plugged for the “simple faith” of the New Testament Church.

Their stand on these and other matters, such as the rejection of physical force, made the earliest Mennonites unpopular in Protestant and Catholic countries of Europe alike. After bloody and vicious persecution (5,000 Anabaptists were martyred in Europe in a ten-year period), a band of survivors fled to North Germany. They were led by a former Catholic priest named Menno Simons, from whom the Mennonites derived their name.

William Penn, Quaker founder of Pennsylvania, was instrumental in assisting Mennonite immigrants to settle there beginning in 1683. Waves of Mennonites came from Europe during the first three decades of the eighteenth century, and Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is still the world’s largest and most varied Mennonite center. Some 43,600 adherents of the Mennonite community live there, according to a recent newspaper survey.

By general Protestant standards, Mennonite worship is plain, even austere. In theology, although there are differences between the various Mennonite branches, conservative and evangelical—if not fundamentalistic—doctrine prevails. Except in the most conservative wings, this theology is coupled with a strong social consciousness. “We found our stride in evangelicalism,” avers Dr. Myron Augsburger, president of Eastern Mennonite College and an internationally known evangelist (see story adjoining).

Mennonites are also strong in missions, having one of the highest ratios of missionaries to supporting members of any denominational family. A worldwide relief ministry is conducted through the Mennonite Central Committee, an inter-Mennonite service agency. Generous giving is required for such a small body to support this extensive work. (The average member of the Mennonite Church gave $151.78 last year, or 5.4 per cent of his income.)

Because the pattern has been for Mennonite ministers to make their living from secular work, very small congregations can subsist. Example: the twenty-seven-member Detroit (Michigan) Mennonite Church—the only one in the city—is self-supporting.

Mennonites lead the way among evangelicals in certain evangelism techniques. The Mennonite Broadcasting Institute (MBI) produces programs for 459 stations. Short, specialized programs dropped in the midst of secular programming—to catch the unchurched—have proven successful lately. “We get by the station’s gatekeeping of putting religious programs in religious time blocs, and we get by the built-in systems people have to turn religion off,” explained MBI’s head, Kenneth Weaver, in an interview. The programs, like the popular “Heart-to-Heart” homemaking broadcast (185 stations carry it) give the listener useful information for everyday living laced with a spiritual message.

Mennonite bookrack evangelism is unique among church programs. About twenty of the Mennonite Church’s district mission boards buy religious books and racks through the MBI at a hefty discount. The books are sold in 314 racks placed in places like supermarkets, variety and department stores, and airport concession stands. Last year more than 100,000 books were moved through this ministry.

Because Mennonites are opposed to all war, alternate programs to military service have become a Mennonite distinctive. Several of the most popular are the Teachers Abroad Program, a three-year assignment in underdeveloped countries; PAX, an overseas technical aid program in community development; and Voluntary Service, a program to serve minority groups and inner city needs in the United States.

Ironically, it was World War II that spurred the breakdown in the traditionally rigid Mennonite style of dress and general separation from the outside world. Alternate service for draft-age Mennonite men formed a beachhead to the outside, and higher education came to be more accepted. During the late forties and the fifties, Mennonite youth felt a “shade of embarrassment” and inferiority about their essentially rural background, according to David Augsburger, speaker on the Mennonite Hour. “Now, Mennonite youth are proud of their background,” he added.

Acculturation among Mennonite groups that had not previously accepted it picked up speed in the sixties. During the last five years, student attire at Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia, has changed drastically. “When you see the kids walk down the street in town now, you can’t tell any difference between them and non-Mennonites,” noted a young Mennonite.

Since the vogue of the peace movement and resistance to the draft, Mennonite youth have suddenly found that their centuries-old position grooves nicely with mainline young people. “Relating to race, social problems, and war has given us an appeal to a lot of people who feel this—plus a spiritual dimension with Christ—is lacking in their churches,” declares Dr. Myron Augsburger.

Although the trend is away from emphasis on dress (the cape dress and head covering for women and the plain coat for men), there is an ultra-traditional strand that opposes modernization. Some Mennonite congregations have withdrawn from their conferences over the issue, and others, like the West Valley District of the Virginia Conference of the Mennonite Church, appear to be near doing so.

“If you get rid of the bonnets, you can win these people,” a student once told Harry Brunk, 72, retired history professor at Eastern Mennonite. But, speaking of an evangelism effort in a high-rise apartment area of Ontario, Canada, the student later related: “We got rid of the bonnets and we aren’t winning them.”

Although arguments over dress appear to be one of the biggest hang-ups among Mennonites, the articulate younger brood sees the real issues elsewhere. This was well illustrated in the baccalaureate address given at Eastern Mennonite last May by Conrad G. Brunk, a Wheaton College graduate and former philosophy instructor at EMC. Said Brunk, 25, now assistant director of the National Service Board for Religious Objectors in Washington, D.C.:

“It is clear that the old form of nonconformity in mere outward appearance can no longer revitalize the church today—to return to it or to attempt to preserve the old forms would lead us to a certain institutional death.… Nonconformity in our age must be an active nonconformism that does not grow out of a sentimental adherence to mere tradition, but out of a renewed sensitivity to the needs of the world around us.… a witness that breaks through all the facades and niceties by which a society covers over its evils.”

RUSSELL CHANDLER

The Augsburgers: ‘Saints In Shoe Leather’

“It’s time for us to stop putting more saints in stained glass and start putting more in shoe leather.”

Dr. Myron Augsburger, noted evangelist and college president, was speaking to a crowd of 7,500 on the opening night of an eight-day interdenominational crusade last month in Hampton Roads Coliseum, Hampton, Virginia. He shared the platform with Negro evangelist Tom Skinner. In all, some 51,000 persons attended the meetings, which were backed by 200 area churches. About one-fourth of those who came were black. More than 400 decisions for Christ were registered.

Interdenominational evangelism is nothing new for Myron Augsburger, who, with his brother, David, is extending his reputation as a leading American spokesman for evangelicalism with a social conscience. For more than half his life Myron has been involved in both the educational program of Eastern Mennonite College—where five years ago at age 35 he became the school’s youngest president—and evangelistic campaigns in more than a dozen cities in the United States, Canada, and Jamaica. Six years ago he was the first Protestant to hold a city-wide campaign in Salt Lake City.

Of his latest crusade, Augsburger said during an interview in his high-ceilinged office at Eastern Mennonite College that he had insisted on major participation by a Negro speaker “to demonstrate the equality of the races rather than doing a lot of preaching about it.”

Augsburger’s preaching, which somewhat resembles that of his friend Dr. Billy Graham, and his firm commitment on social issues exemplify a life style that combines evangelistic zeal with concrete action. He, like most Mennonites, puts strong emphasis on pacifism and nonresistance.

Last winter his college put faith to work by raising $112,000 in one weekend to save a $1.4 million library project (see January 2 issue, page 40). Eastern Mennonite has almost doubled its student body, faculty, and assets since Augsburger took over the helm.

He has some help from another brother, Don, 44, one of the five Augsburger boys born and reared on a farm near Elida, Ohio. Don recently became director of student affairs at the college after a number of years in the pastorate. Fred, 49, is pastor of an integrated, inner-city congregation in Youngstown, Ohio. Only Dan, 37, followed their father’s footsteps on the soil. He is in farming and sales in Canton, Ohio.

David, 32, is known to millions by his voice. For the past nine years he has been the speaker on the “Mennonite Hour” and “The Way to Life,” heard on 128 radio stations around the world. Recently he originated a series of very brief, creative programs and radio-TV “spots” that have gained prime time on national networks.

David says their purpose is to move the hearer or viewer “from unawareness to awareness” and “plant little darts of Christian truth for the Holy Spirit to use.… It’s a total abuse of communication to move a man from ‘zero’ to conversion in fifteen minutes.” One of David’s pet projects, through organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Religious Broadcasters, and the International Christian Broadcasters, is to stimulate other evangelicals to develop similar programs.

Both David and Myron write books (David, four, Myron, seven); David’s most recent volumes, 70 X 7 (Moody) and Be All You Can Be (Creation House) were published last month.

Myron, who was ordained a Mennonite minister at age 20, received a B.D. from Goshen (Indiana) College and holds the master and doctor of theology degrees from Union Seminary in Richmond. He is a board member of the NAE and chairs the board of Inter-Church Evangelism of New Holland, Pennsylvania, an organization he founded.

David’s hobbies are painting and sculpture; Myron continues his father’s love for rare birds. He raises swans at the family farm, near Harrisonburg where he lives with his wife and three children. But popularity as a speaker and evangelist is depopulating his cygnet generation. “We only hatched four this year,” he said with a touch of sadness. “I was away too much.”

Evangelism Consultation

The first major evangelism conference for all Mennonites since 1530 will be held in Chicago April 13–16, 1972. Dr. Myron S. Augsburger, evangelist and president of Eastern Mennonite College in Harrisonburg, Virginia, announced the all-Mennonite Consultation on Evangelism last month. He is chairman of the consultation steering committee.

The gathering is an outgrowth of the Berlin and Minneapolis congresses on evangelism, Augsburger said. At least ten of the nation’s Mennonite denominations are expected to send representatives.

Augsburger said goals of the consultation include establishing a common ground among Mennonites for evangelism, and advancing the distinctiveness of Mennonite discipleship as a pattern for the “larger church.” “Many thoughtful evangelicals are urging us to speak up, to share our concepts of discipleship,” Augsburger added.

Echoes of a once-great movement sounded forth from 3,500 delegates to the sixteenth world convention of Christian Endeavor, held last month in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario.

Children and teen-agers joined their adult sponsors in early morning Bible studies, lively songfests, and inspirational services. In the evenings, they welcomed thousands of local people. The youths behaved relatively well, the only dissident note being an impromptu youth-led worship service that included criticism of older leaders.

The evangelically oriented convention program was essentially a greatly expanded version of the Sunday evening youth meeting, a church tradition that began with the founding of CE nearly ninety years ago. The conventions are a rich part of Christian Endeavor heritage; in earlier days such meetings were spectacular events, frequently attracting more than 50,000.

Christian Endeavor reached its peak about 1935. In recent years, however, there have been signs of a comeback. CE leaders see special opportunities among churches no longer getting adequate youth materials from their denominations.¹Despite CE’s basic orthodoxy, many evangelical denominations have shunned it in favor of their own youth organizations. Such evangelicals hold the movement theologically suspect because it is so often found in congregations of liberal, old-line denominations.

Much responsibility for reviving the movement rests with a genial, 45-year-old Pennsylvanian who recently became general secretary of the International Society of Christian Endeavor, the North American arm. (The global organizational unit is known as the World’s Christian Endeavor Union, and this year’s convention was a joint meeting.) The new administrator is the Reverend Charles W. Barner, who served for twenty-five years as a pastor in the small Evangelical Congregational Church and won a reputation as an effective youth leader. Barner says he twill seek to upgrade CE program materials and to infuse much more young blood into the movement’s leadership.

Christian Endeavor in North America has been encouraged by the success of many of its sister societies abroad. The German, National Union has been particularly strong. More than two dozen countries sent delegates to this year’s world convention in Canada.

Christian Endeavor’s fidelity to Scripture was again underscored. Leaders of the world unit adopted a resolution asserting that “the inspired objective and purpose of the movement remains unchanged. Whilst changing times and new problems call for new methods and appropriate measures to meet them, we believe that the real need of youth for a purposeful life can still be met as they come to know and serve the living Christ.”

Christian Endeavor began in 1881 over a batch of burned cookies. The Reverend Francis Edward Clark, minister of the Williston Congregational Church in Portland, Maine, drew up the original pledge, still used as the basis of membership. It read simply: Trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for strength, I promise Him that I will strive to do whatever He would have me do.”

Clark penned the sentence in the manse one day and left it in the kitchen. His wife, unenthused on first reading it, gradually saw a potential. While she meditated the cookies burned, but a great movement was born. The Clarks organized the first CE society in their own church on February 2, 1881. The idea caught on remarkably, and within six years there were 7,000 societies around the world with a total membership approaching 500,000. Clark headed the movement until his death in 1927.

As the movement grew, a number of denominations began their own youth organizations, and this development ultimately put the damper on CE. Ecumenical leaders in the late forties sought to make the movement part of the National Council of Churches, but CE leaders felt the price would be the yielding of evangelical distinctives. The NCC went ahead with its own youth arm, only to see it die.

For its own survival in the lean years, Christian Endeavor owes much to the sacrificial efforts of Dr. Daniel A. Poling and Miss Phyllis I. Rike. Poling succeeded Clark as head of the movement and was active in it until his death in 1968 at the age of 83. Miss Rike has served in the CE headquarters office, now located in Columbus, Ohio, since 1941; she serves as executive secretary of the world unit and edits CE’s monthly periodical.

No one knows how many CE societies there are in the world today, or how many members. In North America, CE tends to be stronger in rural areas, but with some notable exceptions. Many black inner-city churches carry on active CE programs, and some evangelicals see here a potential instrument for much more effective ministries in ghetto areas. (Each church sets its own program.)

Dr. Clyde Meadows, 69, currently the world president of CE, sees the movement’s comeback among all age groups. The youths themselves seem to be showing the most interest. Adults, he says, are also responding in greater numbers.

Dr. F. Rupert Gibson, a Presbyterian clergyman from Northern Ireland who is vice-president of the world unit, feels CE must make some changes if it is to grow. “The kind of meeting or organizations which appealed to young people fifty or even twenty-five years ago no longer attract them,” he says. “We have to look around for a modern concept to put across the old fundamentals.”

Gibson also wants more young people in CE leadership (only one of the top executives elected at the convention is under 50).

Leighton Ford, speaker for the closing service of the convention, reminded delegates that “We can’t tie Christianity to seventeenth-century English, eighteenth century hymns, nineteenth-century architecture, or even twentieth-century crusades.”

DAVID E. KUCHARSKY

Reformed Families Unite

An association of 55 million members of 127 denominations in seventy nations was formally established in Nairobi, Kenya, last month. The new union, ten years in the making, was named the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational). The merger brings together the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the International Congregational Council.

Ten North American denominations, including 8 million U.S. Protestants, are involved. The news section of CHRISTIANITY TODAY will carry a full report in the September 25 issue.